if I can't feel, I'm not mine, I'm not real
by strangervision
Summary: Loki brainwashed Clint. Even after getting himself back, he's not sure how to stand on a ground that he knows now can collapse. Natasha wants him back, and she won't let him shut her off.


**Yay fic again! This is The Fic That Hulked Out, AKA my take on Loki brainwashing Clint (how it happened, what it did, what it made Clint feel). Many many thanks and much love to brbshittoavenge (on tumblr) (Pamela, if I can call you that) for being so kind as to beta-read this for me, because sometimes I get lost in my own writing (literally) and cannot tell if it's good or bad. Things get away from me. Anyway, this is not porny or anything but there's loads of angst and then some fluff to make up for it, and I think it's a happy ending, or what I consider a happy ending anyways. Enjoy! (Title from Evanescence's ****The Only One**, if anyone is interested.)

* * *

_Right or wrong, can't hold onto the fear that I'm lost without you _

It starts when Loki presses the sceptre to his heart, and suddenly all the emotion is draining out of him. His worry and fear and the longing lurking under still waters to see Natasha again is seeping out, as though the man before him intends to store it inside the writhing glowing globe in the sceptre. Suddenly he doesn't feel anything holding back and he's forgetting why anything was in danger, forgetting what has been holding him back, and he's going with the man, almost mindless. He knows he's inside somewhere, and that is the start of a weak struggle, because he knows but now his mind feels like an experiment in plexiglass, he's trapped in chambers he is not conscious enough to escape. He can't remember what he was like before. Maybe he knows it's important but he can't remember and recollecting is exhausting, so Clint lets go (just like he does on missions, _less thinking more doing_) and follows.

* * *

Coulson calls Natasha, tells her _Barton's been compromised_, and the first thing Natasha thinks of is mind-control, is programming, just like she used to have in her. The second thing she thinks is to get him back. In the first moments, she never once allows herself to think of killing him, of _losing_ him. She will later, when there's time to sit down.

* * *

When the _Avengers_ (and that sounds a tad clichéd and very nasty to her) are gathered in the Helicarrier, one short (because _Clint_), discussing their moves, Natasha finds space to breathe. She tells them Loki has _one of our own_ and this is the first time she realises that she may not get him back.

The second time is when she's trying to get something out of Loki. She's successful, like she always is, but success doesn't mean remaining untouched this time. For instance, what the hell, Natasha can't stop speculating about what it means for Loki to have _expanded_ Clint's mind, because she hopes to hell he hasn't wiped out anything. She will find out later, when Clint tells her, after the battle, about being unmade and why he's so scared, but she doesn't know now, and that scares her. Something else that rattles her is how he called her out on her child's prayer.

* * *

Once they get to Loki's makeshift base, Selvig is puttering around anxiously in the labs doing whatever Loki wants. Somewhere inside Clint, in a place he can only reach if he stretches his mind hard enough, he knows that Selvig is more enticed by the thought of experimenting with no boundaries than he is by the thought of actually doing evil.

It's actually like Loki's taken their morals and values and sense of right and wrong and buried them somewhere they all can't reach. He's remodelled the landscapes of their minds and Clint cannot find his bearings, which means his mind is no longer the tireless, ceaseless, determined mechanism it was when he was a sniper, so he stops, after awhile, trying to figure out. It's not mind-control to a T, but Loki certainly has control. He's taken out their brains and put Machiavelli's inside instead. All Clint can reason with now are the words _why not?_ Because he doesn't have the presence of mind to think of what he's been standing by all these years.

The reason why Clint is such a good sniper is because he compartmentalises extraordinarily well. He's always been able to weed out his feelings to be rational again. And he kills not because he necessarily recognises a _good_ or a _bad_ side, but because he has his own benchmarks. He works for SHIELD because their benchmarks work for him – except for when they sent him to kill Natasha. Natasha's buried in the rubble with his old mind.

* * *

When Loki is trapped on the Helicarrier, Clint formulates a plan of attack, just like Loki instructed. _When they have me, you go in, with your arrows and their modified tips, you blow up the damn place, you make their systems malfunction, you get me out, nothing else matters_. Clint remembers that, word for word. He also remembers saying_ yes, I understand_, and the little jolt inside him when Loki says _glad to know for once someone has my back_. It's like the Machiavellian mind in his head slips when Loki's own emotions falter.

_Will you kill Agent Romanov?_ Loki asks him once, and Clint thinks about it. Why not? He thinks, and stronger than before something is struggling under the false bottom he knows his current state of mind is. He can't get it through, and suddenly Loki is listing all the reasons why he should, including _she is merciless_ and _you were supposed to_ and _she's dangerous, you know, even the closest of comrades turn against you_. Of course he knows the details of their partnership because he'd bade Clint to tell him once, and Clint tells him all he can remember. The emotions are what he leaves out, because they're not with him – so Loki doesn't find out that Clint has another heart; the one he gave Natasha all those years ago, bit by little bit.

* * *

Clint doesn't remember much except in flashes. Mostly, this is so because everything passes too quickly for him to get any details down. He's used to watching slowly for details, keeping his eyes open, not hurrying through the motions, and it's intrinsic. Even is his mind doesn't consciously remember it, his body does. Muscle memory, if you will.

The jet flies close to the Helicarrier; Clint looses an arrow with a detonating tip that takes out an engine. By now Fury will be acting accordingly. The blast has opened up a small chink in the armour, so they drop down through it and Clint is barking out orders he thinks might be planted in his mind by Loki. He knows what he's doing, and he can feel his old mind start to struggled, pounding itself against the plexiglass, but then Machiavelli wins out again and is taunting, _what's wrong with taking SHIELD down? Loki is right about freedom, anyway, and SHIELD is an example of freedom can lead to killing people. Loki is right._ Clint moves, and his old mind seems to settle beneath out of exhaustion. He wants it back, but he's in mission mode, which means acknowledging that there's no time to stop and think so you just have to _move, move, move_.

Before he knows it he's in the main meeting place and Fury is staring at a screen with all the horror in his one good eye, and Clint knows for a fact this man is a master spy, so he wonders why he's letting him see so much emotion. In that one short second, something breaks the surface and gasps into his head again, and he realises that the Fury thinks what he's doing is _wrong_. His train of action falters and wavers at this, and someone lets a grenade roll out into the floor, Agent Hill's yelling _grenade!_ And then he's heading to the detention levels.

* * *

Her earpiece crackles to life, and Natasha is thinking about life flickering out because it's hard not to think of how human you are in the face of chaos, but Natasha hears _Barton_ and _detention level_ and she knows she has to get him back. This is the third time she faces the possibility of killing him, but she pushes it away and gets to her feet.

By the time they're sparring hand to hand, it feels like a butterfly is worming its way out of a chrysalis, in his mind. He's struggling, fighting her and himself and he can't push the thinking away now because he feels like it may be really important. It must be, with the way she's looking at him when he meets her eyes, which are dark with desperation and urgency and what looks like it may be a plea.

She hits him, and then he remembers Loki saying _even the best of comrades turn against you_ and he's sliding his knife out and trying to kill her because _why not? You should, you should_, but Natasha is not trying to kill him, it seems. She bites into his forearm as he tries again to slide the tip of the blade across his neck.

Natasha has never been more terrified, but it only means that there's more adrenaline in her system and she's hyper-aware of everything that's going on. He's trying to kill her, he realises, but she also catches onto the fact, after a moment, that his sparring is not as good as it usually is. He's fighting his own mind as well, she realises, and that only fuels her waning desire to get him back. He's in there somewhere, now she knows, and she needs him back more than ever. _Is this love, Agent Romanov?_ Loki had asked, and she told him _love is for children_ without missing a heartbeat but somewhere inside, Natasha realises she knows that being a top superspy and an adult doesn't mean losing the child in you, the way she thought it meant all these years. So she fights for him in the way she best knows how.

When she's running out of moves she gets a hold across his back and slams his head against the railings lining the narrow catwalk they're fighting on. He grunts painfully and Natasha has to fight from going to him, physically stop herself after her feet take two steps towards his slipping form.

"Tasha?" he asks, groggy.

* * *

When his head connects with the steel bar, Clint is gasping for breath and slipping and sliding all over the place. He's trying to get his bearings, he's collapsing face-first and he braces himself against the floor. He looks at her, and recognises her, always has had her in his mind, but he doesn't quite know why she hasn't killed him yet. She hasn't moved to choke him out, she's just looking like she wants him back and Clint wonders, _why that look if I haven't gone anywhere?_

He can feel it now, the flutter of a conscience, a consciousness in his mind that has not been there in days, the gentle, hesitant bloom of emotion in his chest. He murmurs her name, a question on its tail, but he doesn't know what he's asking, and then she knocks him out cold.

* * *

Natasha stays with him even as she lets SHIELD personnel get him into a cabin and strap him down physically. She knows that they need this for security purposes. She's watching, even as he comes slowly awake, gasping for breath like he's drowning.

He's nearly incoherent, and fighting against the firm new state of mind that is still in there somewhere. She wants to ask what it was like, but she knows that it isn't the time, so she sits, every nerve tensed, and watches him.

"Clint," she says, quiet because she knows he needs it, "You're gonna be alright."

"You know that?" he forces out between his gnashed teeth, "Is that what you know?"

She's taken aback by the snark and bitterness in his tone, but before she can allow that train of thought to leave the station, she reminds herself that it's not yet fully him here with her.

Natasha says things she means, things she knows to say, she paves a floor over the one that's imploded, so that she has sure footing over these rapid waters. He's asking, all of a sudden, if she knows what it's like to be unmade, and she tells him _you know that I do_, as if to remind him of all the trust she placed in him before, of everything they still share.

When he looks up at her, his eyes are grey-blue again, tired and pleading, and she knows she has him back. Broken, but fully him.

* * *

It's a wonder he pulls through the battle, and by the time they're all back where they're supposed to be (Tony goes back to Stark Tower, which he declares is Avengers Tower when repairs are done; Bruce has gone with him on the promise of being given his own personal lab; Steve is resting in a countryside, maybe; Thor and Loki are back on Asgard), Clint is beside her in a nondescript car and she knows they're heading off to a safe-house. He's quiet the whole way, and she falls asleep dreaming of Tesseract-eyed Clint and being killed. When they reach the place, and he wakes her gently. Her eyes snap open, and for awhile she searches his gaze wildly, and it's not lost on him. He simply turns away to unload their baggage while she walks into the house.

Come dinnertime, Clint is still unsure. His footing, his equilibrium has been ripped out from under his feet and he's not sure where he stands. He isn't sure anymore who he is, and by this time he's past the thought that this is what Natasha had been through. He's holding a pity party for himself, he supposes. He doesn't trust himself; that he knows.

He's nursing a glass of vodka tonic, staring out of the full-length windows when Natasha presses herself against his back and slips her arms around his waist. He starts softly and she moves like she wants to look at him, but settles back into the lines of his back and just holds him, steady as before.

Is he going to kill her? That's the question he keeps asking himself, because Loki put his screwed logic into Clint's mind and took his emotions and morals, but even now when all that is gone, he can still sympathise with the guy's crazy thought process. It's like a land, a map for treasure he can't erase. It's etched onto his brain, and even if he has his old mind back, it's a new way of thinking that's been introduced to him and he can't wipe it out completely. He knows right from wrong again, knows discernment and knows emotion, but he's unsure if he'll develop a whole new personality that _doesn't_ know all that he does. He can't trust himself, and he hates that, but he hates the idea of Natasha being compromised for him even more. The thought of killing her physically hurts, so he gently slips out of her embrace and paces into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

She lets him go.

* * *

Natasha can't quite figure out what's wrong with him, but she knows that she's going to wait it out. He's done that for her before, the one time she came to SHIELD with him and was de-programmed and had to re-orient herself with him. She needs him back. He's her stronghold and she is his, he is her equilibrium and her balance, and even if he doesn't trust himself, she trusts him – for some reason she can't quite put her finger to. She was scared of losing him, is still scared that he's not wholly back, but she wants him back more than any of that.

There is a guestroom, but Natasha settles onto the couch with a sheet over her instead. His old, worn sweatshirt is soft against her skin. She allows herself a smile and a little hope, because he may not trust himself to be back but he remembers the shirt she likes to sleep in, and he'd packed it along, so that's enough to give her some faith and a start.

She's asleep on the couch before the night is at its darkest.

When she awakes, he's just sitting on the couch opposite and staring at her. She knows that he does this sometimes; watches her sleep just to assure himself that she's really there and not taken by a mission. This time, she supposes that he's doing it to assure himself that they're both real.

She swallows thickly, then greets him, "Hey,"

He offers a small tilt of his lips, and she smiles back before getting up to brush her teeth. After that, it's breakfast, so she packs the bacon in a pan, letting them splutter side by side in their own fat, while the bread toasts and the eggs scramble in another pan. Normalcy is something else that reminds him he is here, and she figures a classic breakfast will get that started.

He finishes the meal like he doesn't actually taste it, and then he's back to watching her with that wary gaze, ad this time Natasha has a small epiphany, realising that he may actually be watching her to protect here – but – from himself?

The idea hits her like a small pebble and if she tenses, she doesn't do it visibly.

"Don't shut me out, Clint, not after I just got you back,"

She crosses the small space between them to where he is and settles beside him, looking at him intently as he lets his gaze drop.

"Hey, Clint," she murmurs, taking one of his large, weathered palms into her own hands, "You in there?"

"I don't know, Tasha," he replies, so broken that her breath catches and she's wrapping herself around him before either of them can think too much. He's folding his arms tight around her and his breathing is harsh in the crook of her neck, like he's drowning and she's a buoy. When he pulls her even closer, she's sitting in his lap, and she's been waiting for this moment, for him to break and let her in, so she figures if he needs her to wait a little longer then she will.

It doesn't take an eternity, and before long his words are rushed and damp against her skin.

"I don't know who I am, I know who I'm capable of being. He didn't control my mind, just gave me a new one, gave me a new way of thinking and now I don't know if I can forget it, what if I go back in there – what if I _become_ the monster – I wanted to _kill_ you, Tasha, I nearly killed you, I…"

He exhausts his words and his thoughts are too convoluted to voice so he holds onto her and breathes against her skin, she's murmuring softly against his hair and pressing kisses against his head, Clint doesn't know where they go now. Natasha pulls back to look at him, brings his hands slowly to her sides and moves his palms across her soft skin, then down to her thighs, her calves, making him feel her. He's confused for a moment before he realises that she's making him frisk her, and that she has no weapons on her.

When his eyes clear, she nods at him, "I'm not armed, Clint," and she motions around them, "and there's nothing near us except the things we put here together when we bought the house,"

After a heartbeat, she also adds, "I trust you, Clint," and the reverence in her words has him bowing his head into the hollow of her neck and clutching her close to make sure that she is real, sitting before him and telling him what he cannot tell himself.

"I do, I trust you," she murmurs over and over, and the muted moments he has passed through since Loki told him what he already knew (_you have heart_) are broken by her constant words, because she is concrete, her mellow voice is solid, and she is here and giving him back the heart that was with her for safekeeping.

* * *

He still doesn't know how to trust himself, will not find his equilibrium until weeks, maybe months later, but he takes from Natasha's trust in him and maybe it is enough for now, for him to do the things he needs.

Natasha is there throughout it all, refuses any solo missions in the next few months and sits by him. In the present, she presses as close to him as possible when they're not doing things like training or running, slips into the room at night and winds herself tight into his embrace, smoothes his fevered dreams away with a hand over his heart.

Eventually she tells him what Loki told her, about making him kill her _intimately, in all the ways he knows you fear_, and it nearly sends Clint spiralling down into despair and self-loathing again, but she takes his hand physically and metaphorically and presses it to her chest, above her heart; to her throat, and then she pulls him close and kisses him like it's all she's ever wanted to do. That is when he knows that he will be okay.

She stops slipping into his sheets in the middle of the night and starts sleeping beside him, snuggling into his arms and closing her eyes, dropping off before he does. She wakes later than him, giving him sleepy smiles and sometimes huddling even closer in a way that has his heart clenching fiercely.

Natasha has to fight her own trust issues, but it's easier when she knows that he's the same partner of hers he has always been. She remembers her programming, too, and it helps to know that this is, in a twisted way, familiar ground.

In the month or two that Fury lets them off the grid, waiting for the heat to die down before more missions can start, Clint and Natasha travel. For the first few weeks that they're at the safe house, Natasha focuses on Clint and on getting him back fully. He holds himself back, distances himself because he's afraid of what he can do to her, but she counters every effort of his. She pulls him close, teaches him how to cook, wrapping her petite frame around his to guide his motions at the stove. She makes him curl around her and teach her archery, even if he's sure she already knows it. She kisses him hard and gentle and every way in between, heady nips at his lips and slow, tender presses of her mouth against his, more that makes Clint squirm in his seat and draw her close, makes him spear his fingers through her hair.

When their bruises fade and the food runs out she drags him out to buy groceries and insists that they push the cart together, pressing up between his arms and against his chest and turning every ten minutes to press a kiss to some part of his face. The older ladies chuckle affectionately at them and Natasha gives them warm smiles back, happy to settle back into him.

Bit by bit, her trust in him becomes infectious, and he starts to trust himself too. It starts with things he does without thinking: he pulls her close to press kisses to her cheek and her lips and she responds eagerly, they share a blanket when they watch movies and he pulls her close to nestle in the crook of his arm. Before he knows it entirely, they're as physically intimate as they were before. Clint thinks that this is more because he cannot resist her being close, than the possibility that he trusts himself again.

In the second month they tour Europe. There's Poland, with bright flowers lining the roads and yellow meadows in the country-sides, Llamas and mud-covered pigs and horse carriage rides, and by the time they're on one of those rides, they're nearly joined at the hip. In Venice, they take boat rides through the city itself and Clint isn't sure he wants to let go of Natasha's hand, or ever have to not feel her pressed wholly against his side. By their first night in Prague, the kissing gets a little more urgent than before, and Natasha is whispering _make love to me_ – Natasha, who says love is for children and never gives in to his whining, and he cannot help his heart from swelling with affection.

It is not until after they're gasping each other's names and tumbling, gone, that he realises in this whole month he hasn't thought once of why it would be okay to hurt her. Clint thinks that maybe he is getting himself back. They nearly never leave the hotel room in Prague because they're so busy rediscovering each other.

On their last night there, just before they return to their safe house in the States, Clint drops a kiss against her forehead and murmurs, "I was so lost without you,"

She says simply in reply, "You weren't yourself," and suddenly, he knows that it is true. He's always been made of the emotions in his marrow, the moral principles that he guides himself by – no matter how unconventional they were. Now that he has those back, it doesn't matter that he had been introduced to a new thought process; it was just that – knowledge. Intelligence. He isn't going to let it define him.

Almost as if she can feel the new calm and steadiness of his heartbeat, Natasha reaches up to press a kiss against his cheek and curls back into him, closing her eyes.

She never says she loves him, but he knows without a doubt now that she trusts him, and perhaps in these times that is more important than anything else. She shows him, too, that she trusts him. She behaves the way she always has around him, and somewhere along the line Clint realises that she's just been waiting for him to come back to this familiar ground. She never says she loves him. She says _make love to me_, and other, smaller things that are laced with affection, but she never says it. She does trust him, though, with all she is, and it takes months, years maybe, but when Clint comes back from his spiralling to look that truth in the face, he knows it's the only thing he's ever needed to keep him alive, to bring him back when he is lost.


End file.
